Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
New Mustangs owners Dave Heller, left, and Bob Herrfeldt, right, stand with Woody Hahn, president of the Billings Mustangs board, at the start of a press conference to announce the team’s sale.
The new owners of the Billings Mustangs said Friday that they intend to be in Billings for what one of them said would be a “very, very long time.”
Dave Heller and Bob Herrfeldt, partners in Main Street Baseball, based in Davenport, Iowa, were introduced at a press conference Friday afternoon at Dehler Park, the 6-year-old ballpark that is home to the Mustangs.
“This is not our team,” Heller said to a gathering of reporters and civic leaders. “This is your team. We’re simply the stewards.”
Heller also promised they would try to make Dehler Park “the most fun, affordable, family-friendly place to watch baseball in the whole Northwest.”
It was Heller who said they hoped to be here a “very, very long time.” Herrfeldt, for his part, said, “we’ll be hanging around for the next 10 or 20 years” until they can get their children to take over the team, allowing them to retire.
The press conference was opened by Woody Hahn, president of the Mustangs’ board of directors and one of the local investors who have owned the team for decades.
Heller praised Hahn in his opening remarks, saying that when anyone has asked him why he was interested in the Mustangs, “the first two words out of my mouth—‘Woody Hahn.’”
Heller said that when he and Herrfeldt bought the Davenport club seven years ago, the team was on the verge of leaving town.
“We were able to not only save baseball in the Quad Cities, but turn it into something that is a civic treasure,” he said.
Herrfeldt said one of the things that attracted him to Billings was the deep history of the Mustangs here—going back to 1948—and the decades-long ownership by local investors. Such longevity is increasingly rare in baseball, he said.
To buy a team in such a town “truly is humbling for me and my family. … We’ll make you guys proud,” he said.
Heller said they would do all they could to make game day an experience attractive to everyone from 2-month-olds to centenarians. In Davenport, he said, they put in a full-size Ferris wheel.
“Anything we do that puts a smile on a child’s face—that’s a good thing,” he said, Even so, he added, “We are first and foremost a baseball team.”
He also said the new owners have no intention of raising ticket prices, at least in the near term. As for concessions, he said prices would be reviewed annually, as they are at their other properties. Sometimes prices are adjusted, he said, both up and down.
In a press release issued as the press conference got underway, the Mustangs said the sale has been approved by the Pioneer League, in which the Mustangs play, and Minor League Baseball. They are awaiting final approved from Major League Baseball.
The release also said the “Mustangs front office staff will remain the same, led by 2014 Pioneer League Executive of the Year Gary Roller, a Billings native who has worked 22 seasons for the team.”
The Mustangs have been affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds for 41 years, longer than any other affiliation in short-aseason and rookie-level baseball.
The city of Billings owns Dehler Park, which cost $13.7 million and was funded mostly by a bond issue approved by city residents in 2006.
